“Ambitious . . . lively. . . . Beautifully reimagining a city that was a distant but integral part of American life, Flavell’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in the colonial period.”—Andrea Wulf, New York Times Book Review A Wall Street Journal “Summer Reading” Selection “Flavell’s study offers wonderfully evocative glimpses into the lives of men ... Read moresuch as Benjamin Franklin, who lived in the city for 17 years.”—The Guardian “[A] well-researched and enjoyable book.”—Leslie Mitchell, Literary Review “[An] engaging social history, written with a novelist’s eye for character and plot.”— Gaiutra Bahadur, The Observer “This is a fine, original book, and a jolly good read.”—Tim Richardson, Country Life “This is a good book that lives up to expectations.”—Leonard Schwarz, Reviews in History “Julie Flavell has produced not an account of the administration of the American colonies from London but something much more original. . . . She reveals an extraordinary, almost forgotten world, rich with anecdote.”— Duncan Fallowell, Daily Express “Flavell’s subjects—their lives marked variously by bankruptcy, broken engagements, illegitimacy, and suicide—invite illusions to Fielding and Austen. . . . [An] engaging portrait of colonials in the metropolis. Highly recommended.”—G. F. Steckley, Choice Reviews Online “A wonderful evocation of the full panorama and panoply of life in eighteenth-century London.”—Andrew O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided “With clarity and sure authority, Julie Flavell tells us challenging things that will cast new light on the many readers’ commonly-held beliefs. This is a splendid book.”—Peter Marshall “A fascinating account of Americans in London in the 1760s and 1770s. Julie Flavell ingeniously weaves together the experiences of the Laurens family of South Carolina, Stephen Sayre of Long Island, and Benjamin Franklin, plus many other colonists, to reveal the rich variety of their London life, and she also illuminates the growing tensions of the revolutionary crisis in strikingly new ways.”—Richard S. Dunn, author of Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 “Before Americans had a Washington—or any other capital city worthy of the name—they had London. Taking as her subject the men and women, young and old, enslaved and free, high-born and humble, who crossed the Atlantic in the years just before and during the Revolution, Julie Flavell paints a vivid and compelling picture of London as the cultural, political, and economic center of colonial American life.”—Eliga H. Gould, author of The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution Show Less